While Doing 25 Chain Naxx trash pulls last night – one of the healers piped up. “I’m not getting any Replenishment, is something wrong”

The Three shadow Priests said – “We don’t put VT up in trash pulls”
“Oh”

The crux of this observation, is that regardless of our abilities & talent trees and talent tree point placement – we have Vampiric touch – it doesn’t mean that we will actually produce the conditions to proc it all the time.

While we are AOEing we are not producing these conditions. I loves our AOE it, even better it crits! Its also shadow Damage, so I can use it to bolster up my VE healing when my party takes damage during trash by sticking on my instant cast VE and then Mindsearing the target next to it.

But!

Mind sear is sitting round about 27-30% of our overall raid damage.
so I’m, thinking along the lines that 30% of our dps time isn’t procing Replenishment. I don’t need Replenishment, and I’m not really interested gimping my DPS I don’t want to resort to single target dps when I can aoe.

Shadow Priest dpsing ‘culture’ to coin a line – seems to be following along the lines that VE is not always important. So the result is Shadow Priests don’t stick Ve up as diligently as we used to in BC. Even I in Patchwerk did not recast my VE That may have been what helped me get over 4k dps on him last night. ( my 1st time over 4k)

Our Vampiric Touch Dots are scaling much higher then our Shadow Word Pain – regardless that SWP is getting auto refreshed with Mindflay. So in a boss fight where there is sustained constant damage being done, of course we will keep using Vampiric Touch, and we will keep using Mindblast which causes the Vampiric Touch to proc into Replenishment, just not when we Aoe when mobs go down so quick.

However the Mana regen changes to come in 3.1 will make Replenishment more important, just from a chain pulling point. You want to clear the trash as quick as possible without wiping, and healers running low on mana is dangerous. We might need to make the conscious descision to single target for the good of the raid.

Well as for warlocks getting replenishment

As an example Warlocks improved Soul Leech are reported to be going to proc Replenishment. – I don’t play a warlock so I went looking to see what Soul Leech does – and Soul leech gives a chance for health returns if certain spells are cast. Improved Soul leech – Also restores Mana in addition to the health to yourself and your summoned demon.

So the conditions for a Warlock to Proc Replenishment are that Soul Leech is up, and the Warlock has cast Shadow bolt, Shadowburn, Choas Bolt, Soul Fire, Incinerate, Searing Pain, or Conflagrate

( Thats alot more then just Mindblast! 😦 )

However, just from reading comments on Wiki and random forums Soul Leech or Improved Soul leech doesn’t seem to be taken rather seriously for a Destro Warlock unless they are soloing. In a Raid, they run out of mana they tap down, a healer heals them to full health. Even with the added bonus of Replenishment, will that be enough for a Destro warlock to make sure Soul Leech is up in every raid, for trash and Boss fights? I doubt it.

Poor frost mages seem to gotten a shorter end of the stick when it comes to Replenishement – they seem to need to rely on their water element being up and for the proc to be available, and the Elemental is not a constant companion.

Where as Pallys and Hunters in the right spec, use their abilities that proc replenishment on a regular basis.

Ret Pally
Judgement of Wisdom/Judgements of the wise

Survival Hunter
Procs off Explosive Shot crits

So regardless of the spreading around the love and the Mana. Given that from I’ve been able to find – two of those ‘special’ 5 classes, the Destro Warlock, and the Frost Mage are not going to want to be relied on to produce Replenishment on a regular basis in a raid. and even Shadow Priests that are merrily Aoeing 30% of the time . We seem to be comming less reliable as the only sources for Mana return. We lose our specialness and become more ‘comparable’ to other dps classes – is that a worthy trade. Let me have a serious chance at the DPS metres and you will make me not so special?

Mages, hunters and locks will all have to consider whether their raid needs replenishment and spec for it, even though on balance it will probably mean reduced dps (maybe there are a few who prefer the respective trees anyway, but they won’t be min/maxers). So on that basis, if you are a raiding destro lock, for example, you’ve probably specced that way knowing one of your roles in the raid is to keep replenishment up. It’s not a matter of whether the particular spell is used or not – you will use it specifically to proc replenishment.

On the matter of mages, the replenishment talent will “replace” improved water elemental – the general feeling is this means it won’t be tied to the elemental but something else. So again, it’s going to be something they can do easily to keep the buff up, we can hope.

We are lucky in that we don’t have to think about sepccing for replenishment – it’s right there at the heart of our only dps spec. We’re a better choice for replenishment than the classes above because they have access to higher dps specs instead. So if our raid needs replenishment, I see it as our job to first trigger it before aoeing. Sure that hits our dps, but it keeps the healers in mana. Right now, it’s not a decision we really need to worry about, but in Ulduar we might.

Retadins have it the easiest — they judge at every cooldown and don’t even need to think about proccing the buff. So I’d say if you have one in your raid you don’t need to worry about it yourself so much.

Destruction Warlocks use Incinerate as their primary filler and cast Conflagerate and Chaos Bolt on every cooldown. Some of them also chain Soulfires when Backdraft (haste) procs. I think it’s safe to say that if the ‘lock is specced into Improved Soul Leech, then it will be up. From what I’ve heard, there really isn’t a DPS cost for us; replenishment is actually an outcome of our DPS rotation.

Shadowburn is a finisher, since it has a soul shard cost that is only refunded if the target dies within five seconds. It isn’t meant to be spammed. And Searing Pain is our high-threat nuke, typically only used if the ‘lock is attempting to tank something (like the demon-phases of Leotheras and Illidan) or pull aggro off of an unlucky healer. Those are decidedly odd choices!

I can’t recall the name of the talent but there is a destruction talent that gives Warlocks some sort of spellcast boost (20% haste for 3 casts I think?) when their Imp crits with Firebolt. There is another talent that reduces the cast time of Firebolt so they’re being launched out like a machine gun. The only Destruction Warlock I know has Improved Soul Leech to keep giving his little Imp mana for Firebolts to try and keep that buff up.